Data Resource

Management
SECTION 1: TECHNICAL FOUNDATION OF DATA MANAGEMENT
DATABASE MANAGEMENT

It is important to appreciate from the beginning the value of understanding databases

and database management. In todays world, just about every piece of data you
would ever want to access is organized and stored in some type of database. The question
is not so much Should I use a database? but rather What database should I
use? Although many of you will not choose a career in the design of databases, all of
you will spend a large portion of your timewhatever job you chooseaccessing data
in a myriad of databases. Most database developers consider accessing the data to be
the business end of the database world, and understanding how data are structured,
stored, and accessed can help business professionals gain greater strategic value from
their organizations data resources
 Fundamental Data Concepts

Character- The most basic logical data element is the character, which consists of a single
alphabetic, numeric, or other symbol. You might argue that the bit or byte is a more elementary
data element, but remember that those terms refer to the physical storage elements provided
by the computer hardware, as discussed in Chapter 3. Using that understanding, one way to
think of a character is that it is a byte used to represent a particular character. From a users
point of view (i.e., from a logical as opposed to a physical or hardware view of data), a character
is the most basic element of data that can be observed and manipulated.
Field- The next higher level of data is the field, or data item. A field consists of a grouping of
related characters. For example, the grouping of alphabetic characters in a persons name may
form a name field (or typically, last name, first name, and middle initial fields), and the
grouping of numbers in a sales amount forms a sales amount field. Specifically, a data field
represents an attribute (a characteristic or quality) of some entity (object, person, place, or
event). For example, an employees salary is an attribute that is a typical data field used to
describe an entity who is an employee of a business. Generally speaking, fields are organized
such that they represent some logical order, for example, last_name, first_name, address, city,
state, and zip code.
 Fundamental Data Concepts

Record- All of the fields used to describe the attributes of an entity are grouped to
form a record. Thus, a record represents a collection of attributes that describe a
single instance of an entity. An example is a persons payroll record, which consists of
data fields describing attributes such as the persons name, Social Security number,
and rate of pay. Fixed-length records contain a fixed number of fixed-length data fields.
Variable-length records contain a variable number of fields and field lengths. Another
way of looking at a record is that it represents a single instance of an entity. Each
record in an employee file describes one specific employee.

Primary Key- This is a unique identifier. The value of a primary key can be
anything that will serve to uniquely identify one instance of an entity, and distinguish
it from another.
Fundamental Data Concepts
 Fundamental Data Concepts
File- A group of related records is a data file (sometimes referred to as a table or flat file). When it
is independent of any other files related to it, a single table may be referred to as a flat file. As a
point of accuracy, the term flat file may be defined either narrowly or more broadly. Strictly
speaking, a flat file database should consist of nothing but data and delimiters. More broadly, the
term refers to any database that exists in a single file in the form of rows and columns, with no
relationships or links between records and fields except the table structure. Regardless of the
name used, any grouping of related records in tabular (row-and-column form) is called a file. Files
are frequently classified by the application for which they are primarily used, or by their
permanence.
Database- A database is an integrated collection of logically related data elements. A database
consolidates records previously stored in separate files into a common pool of data elements that
provides data for many applications. The data stored in a database are independent of the
application programs using them and of the type of storage devices on which they are stored.
Thus, databases contain data elements describing entities and relationships among entities.
For example, Figure 5.3 outlines some of the entities and relationships in a database for an electric
utility. Also shown are some of the business applications (billing, payment processing) that depend
on access to the data elements in the database.
Fundamental Data Concepts
 Database Structures

Hierarchical Structure - Early mainframe DBMS packages used the hierarchical

structure, in which the relationships between records form a hierarchy or treelike
structure. In the traditional hierarchical model, all records are dependent and arranged
in multilevel structures, consisting of one root record and any number of subordinate
levels.
 Database Structures

Network Structure- The network structure can represent more complex logical
relationships and is still used by some mainframe DBMS packages. It allows many-to-
many relationships among records; that is, the network model can access a data
element by following one of several paths because any data element or record can be
related to any number of other data elements
 Database Structures
Relational Structure- The relational model is the most widely used of the three
database structures. It is used by most microcomputer DBMS packages, as well as by
most midrange and mainframe systems. In the relational model, all data elements
within the database are viewed as being stored in the form of simple two-dimensional
tables, sometimes referred to as relations . The tables in a relational database are flat
files that have rows and columns. Each row represents a single record in the file, and
each column represents a field. The major difference between a flat file and a
database is that a flat file can only have data attributes specified for one file. In
contrast, a database can specify data attributes for multiple files simultaneously and
can relate the various data elements in one file to those in one or more other files.
Database Structures